The Friends’ 25th annual book sale starts Wednesday at the main library in downtown Miami, with great deals on fiction and nonfiction — you pay a whopping $3 for a hardback — as well as cookbooks, art books, rare books, kids’ books, CDs and DVDs.

Lynn Summers, the president of the Friends of Miami-Dade Public Library, says the importance of the sale can’t be underestimated.

“The sale is important because it’s our single largest fundraiser,” she says. “This event allows us to pay internal operating expenses as well as provide $50,000 or $60,000 per year in supplemental funds for the library.” That supplemental fund pays for important literacy programs, among other things.

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The sale — which began in the tough months after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and was the brainchild of former library employee Lainey Brooks, who retired in 2014 — draws book lovers of all sorts, grownups and kids alike. Some schools even bring students to shop for holiday gifts (or for themselves — who knows what treasures they’ll unearth?)

Summers says the library’s data has shown that the sale’s growth has virtually paralleled the success of the Miami Book Fair — and that says something positive about the city.

“The more successful the book fair, the more successful the book sale,” she says. “We conclude the success of our book sale means that it’s an indication that Miami has really become a book town.”